Opinion

A marriage made in Edmonton?

It's possible that every great idea ever born in the mind of man started with a "What if?" ("Hey, what if I put some peanut butter in this here jelly sandwich?") But of course, that's also how a lot of ridiculous ones got started too. ("Hey, what if we changed the flavour of Coca-Cola and pulled the old kind off the shelves?")

The Alberta opposition parties are playing a game of "What if ?" these days -- or perhaps it would be better described as "What now?"

On the eve of the March 4 provincial election, the Liberals and New Democrats seemed poised to make the most of a rare opportunity. On March 5, they found themselves extracting Farmer Ed Stelmach's rubber boots from their lower intestines. Stelmach's victory rivalled the most crushing electoral triumphs of Conservative predecessors Ralph Klein and Peter Lougheed, yet it was not predicated on a crusade against Ottawa, like Lougheed's, or against big government, like Klein's. It was unforeseen, and to those who underestimate Stelmach's charm, it remains incomprehensible.

The blown chance has Alberta's parties of the left so vexed that they are contemplating an unprecedented electoral truce patterned on the federal "unite-the-right" movement that ultimately carried Stephen Harper to the prime ministership. These days, there is little to distinguish the Alberta Liberals and the New Democrats ideologically. At the federal level, they have real quarrels over foreign policy, Senate and electoral reform, trade and other issues. But within the province, where the "conservative" government spends more on health, education and social programs than any other in Confederation, the two parties have spent recent elections trying to outbid Croesus and fighting over which caucus can shout "Kyoto!" more loudly.

The Grits and the Knee-dips have, unlike the federal Tories and Reformers of old, been squabbling over slices of an electoral pie that is none too voluminous even considered as a whole. A popular-front combo, assuming that the parties retained all of their supporters and were able to turn them out, would have

won just 19 of the Legislative Assembly's 83 seats in the March election. That's still more than the 11 they are clinging to, and a larger rump might have given both parties the chance to stress-test some leadership timber.

After the results arrived, there was a natural expectation that Liberal leader Kevin Taft might step down, but nobody else seems eager to take over an underfunded, fractious party whose brand has about as much inherent appeal in Alberta as Union Carbide's does in Bhopal. (The Liberals have traditionally drawn an inordinate number of candidates from Alberta's legal profession, with which they enjoy close ties; and what Alberta lawyer, these days, can't find more profitable uses for his billable hours?)

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, has been circulating a three-step plan for cooperation between the Liberals, the NDP and the Green Party. His proposed strategy is to divide up the province's ridings and run one candidate against the Tories in each; let each party handle its own campaign, but agree on a list of "core priorities"; and, in the case of a majority victory for the alliance, implement the main agenda, introduce proportional representation as a way of inoculating against runaway PC victories, and split amicably. Taft's Liberals, who have already been discussing a name change, have said that "Everything is on the table" as far as they are concerned. In theory it is possible to imagine the New Democrats going along if organized labour leads the way.

In the end, though, such a pact would savour of a merger and would have a strong tendency to become one. But the practical minds aiming at such an accord are likely to find that the Liberal and NDP brands are not as easily trifled with as were those of the federal right-wing parties -- i. e., the neologism of convenience that was the "Canadian Alliance" and the fusty oxymoron of "Progressive Conservatism." If it were simply a matter of agreeing on "core priorities," the Alberta Liberals and New Democrats could have joined forces in 1975. Like small communities of persecuted religious recusants everywhere, Alberta's opposition parties have become stubborn, proud and inbred over time. The nucleus of each is a coterie of old believers who have watched colleagues and forebears sacrifice whole lives for a few transitory moments of glory and a long, bitter diet of humiliation.

It's not in the nature of human beings to write off such sunk costs. Mere ideologues may be willing to swap political capital in order to have their ideas implemented. But when you're a member of a noble house in exile -- and that is how Alberta's opposition parties see themselves -- you don't sell the silverware, even if it means going hungry.